I couldn't remember if my mother was on the day shift or the night shift that day. I was so distracted by Karen's problems that I didn't listen when she had told me, so I entered the house quietly in case she was sleeping. My parents' bedroom door was open, and I could see she wasn't home yet. She probably was doing the late afternoon shift, which wouldn't end until eleven p.m. I checked the kitchen and, sure enough, found instructions for preparing my father's dinner. She had already made a meat loaf. I just had to warm it up along with the mashed potatoes and vegetables. I'd make my father and me a nice salad, too. There was still half of my father's favorite pie in the refrigerator, chocolate cream.
I looked forward to these dinners with just my father and me. I had been doing the dinner warm-ups and preparations ever since I was ten. Most of the time, Jesse was there, too, but sometimes he was at a practice or at an away game or even on a date. I know that these dinners with only the two of us brought my father and me closer. He would ask me questions about school, and he would even tell me about his legal work, why a case was interesting and what he intended to accomplish. It was at these special dinners when he would tell me more about his own youth.
What worried me tonight was whether or not he would see the turmoil inside me. He wasn't as good at reading my feelings and thoughts as my mother was, but when there were only the two of us, he could focus sharper attention on me and see right through any false face. If he had even an inkling of what Karen and I were planning, he would surely go through the roof. I had seen him when he was very angry because of something one of his law partners had 'done or something a judge had decided. He could swell up and look pretty intimidating. Fortunately for me, I could count on the fingers of one hand how many times in my life he had been more than just a little irritated at something I had done, and the same was true for Jesse. I could sense that he hated being angry at either of us more than we hated it.
That didn't mean he would let either of us get away with anything Jesse and I were certainly not spoiled. Our parents were firm and far from doting. Anything they gave us, they gave us after careful consideration, and we were always made to appreciate it. Nothing was to be taken for granted. My father, especially, was always keen on us understanding the value of a dollar, as he put it. That, he said, was the way his father had put it to him.
"Show me you're responsible, and I'll give you more responsibilities:" he always told us.
For most of our lives, it seemed, we were always proving ourselves to our parents.
I was already setting the table and getting everything ready for dinner when my father came home.
"Little Mama's at it again;" he sang to me when he stopped at the kitchen doorway. "Be right down."
The debate began to rage in me. One side of me said I should tell my father everything and ask him to keep it a secret but do what had to be done to protect Karen and her mother. The other side of me came roaring back, the voice screaming about how I would hurt my best friend so deeply even the other students at school would hate and distrust me. I would have to move away as well.
"So, how's it going?" Daddy asked, slipping into his chair.
"Good," I said, and quickly turned to the food. I could feel his eyes on me as I worked.
"Everything looks good," he said. "And I'm hungry. I had one of those working lunches where you don't know what you're eating after a while. I'm not sure I ate anything."
He started to eat.
"Everything okay?" he asked. I knew why he asked. I was being too quiet.
"Yes, Daddy. I have this test to study for, so I'm going over to Karen's after I clean up."
"Oh. How is Karen? Your mother mentioned she was having some sort of a health problem?"
"No, it's nothing," I said quickly. "She had a headache one day in school, that's all."
"Glad she's feeling better. She's a nice kid," he said. "When I was your age, I palled around with one guy most of the time, Bobby Mallen. We were inseparable."
"I never hear you talk about him."
"That's because when I went off to college, he went into the army, and we lost touch. I made other close friends, and I'm sure he did, too. It's natural. You go off in different directions. Not many people remain close friends with the friends they had in high school. That's true even with college friends, for that matter. Jobs, careers, travel, change it."
"That sounds sad to me," I said.
He shrugged.
"Sometimes it is sad. It's all part of . . ."
"Growing up. I know," I said, and he laughed.
"I wasn't going to say that. I was goifig to say something bigger, part of life. We zigzag through the years, turning this way and that. I went to one highschool reunion, but Bobby didn't show, and I had trouble even recognizing some of the other
classmates. One of these days, you'll read that novel by Thomas Wolfe, You Can't Go Home Again."
"What's that mean?"
"You can't recover the past. It's something that is gone forever, despite albums and yearbooks and old letters. We're just not who we were, honey. It's foolish to try to be. Be comfortable with who you are now and later. But you're too young for any of this talk, so don't worry about it," he said, waving his hand as if the words and thoughts were annoying flies. "When you're my age . ."
"I'll forget Karen and all our days together?"
"You won't forget. It will just be different. Everything is so intense right now. Time has a way of making what you think is terrible now not so terrible and what you think is wonderful not so wonderful. There are things, Zipporah, older people can tell you but you just can't appreciate or even understand until you go through them yourself. Then you wish you could go back and do so much differently.